It is well known in the drilling industry, and in particular in the oil and gas drilling industry, to protect boreholes with a steel liner which is known as a "casing". From time to time, it is necessary to replace all or part of such casings. Whilst, on occasions, it may be possible to remove large sections of casing intact it is recognized that under certain circumstances casing can only be removed by milling. Milling is carried out by running a tool having appropriate milling formations into the casing on a tubing string, and rotating the string to rotate the tool and thereby mill away the material of the casing.
Typical milling tools are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,717,290; EP-A-231989, EP-A-266484 and EP-A-385673.
A well recognized problem which occurs during milling operations of this type is that the swarf formed by the milled casing material includes long strands which cannot easily be cleared from the milling tool by a conventional mud flushing techniques. These long strands tend to form "birdsnests" which can impair operation of the milling tool and, in extreme cases, cause jamming of the milling tool and the remainder of the milling assembly.
With a view to reducing as far as possible the undesirable birdsnesting effect referred to above, it is recognized to be a desirable characteristic during milling operations for the swarf formed to be in the form of short strands or chips. To promote formation of short strands and chips considerable effort has been expended in designing milling formations which have an inherent tendency to produce short strands or chips of swarf. Additionally, it is recognized that as a general rule the size of swarf produced tends to be reduced as the speed of rotation of the milling tool increases for a given load (weight) on the tool. Thus, with a view to keeping swarf size to a minimum it is recognized that the milling tool should be designed to produce small swarf at an optimum high operating speed and that the tool should be rotated at that high operating speed.
Unfortunately, rotating the top end of a long tubing string at a constant and relatively high speed does not guarantee that a milling tool, which may be located several thousand feet from the rotary table which rotates the tubing, will rotate at a uniform high rotational rate. In particular, variations in the feed rate and characteristics of the casing being milled will produce a variable drag on the milling tool. If, for example, the milling tool is subject to a sudden increase in feed loading or suddenly encounters a discontinuity in the casing material the milling blades may tend to dig in and produce a sudden increase in the resistance of the milling tool to rotation. This will slow the rate of rotation of the milling tool and the continued rotation of the rotary table will thereafter tend to twist the drill string until the resultant increased torque applied to the mill tool enables the tool to overcome the increased resistance. The drill string will then tend to unwind rapidly to relieve the built-up twist resulting in a sudden increase in the rotational speed of the milling tool. The situation is made worse by the fact that the milling tool will, in general, be made up with stabilizers and other components which tend to drag on the casing and will thus contribute to a variable resistance to rotation. The situation is made even worse by the fact that an attempt to rotate the tubing string at a high speed to produce the required high operating speed for the milling tool will increase the frictional drag induced by the engagement of the tubing and the downhole assembly with the casing and thereby further contribute to variations in actual milling tool rotational speed.
Thus, even if a drill string has been rotated at a nominally constant rate by the rotary table of a drilling rig, the rotational speed of a milling tool connected to the string may vary from nothing up to a speed several times faster than the nominal rotational speed of the string. As a result, even if a milling tool is effective to produce small swarf when operating at an optimum speed, the same tool may intermittently produce long swarf in use as a result of the unavoidable variations in actual milling speed.